


The Door to Your Room Was the Door to Mine

by honey_wheeler



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, First Time, Missing Scene, S08E02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-09 05:03:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18631357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honey_wheeler/pseuds/honey_wheeler
Summary: When he groans again, a slow smile spreads across her face. Arya Stark has known only a small amount of power in her life, he knows. The unwanted power of nobility as a girl, the implacable power of deadly skill as a woman. Her smile tells him he just gave her one more power.Warning: S08E02 spoilers





	The Door to Your Room Was the Door to Mine

He can see the moment her bravado falters.

It’s a relief, frankly. The Arya he’s used to is bossy, mutinous, challenging. From the moment she came to find him in the forge, she’s been all three of those things, plus a dab hand with sharp implements. It’s the same Arya he remembers from before, when she was barely more than a child, the Arya he’s thought about so often that it become something of a constant presence, like the ache of a sore tooth, something he’d prod at from time to time to feel a fresh burst of pain before letting it settle back into a dull, familiar, almost comforting throb.

Kissing that Arya, touching that Arya, seeing that Arya naked…that’s something his heart had some trouble reconciling, even though his body was more than willing. It had always seemed a far off thing, something that lived only in _tomorrow_ and never sat easily in the idea of _today_. When the mask slips, it seems to make room for something new between them, something _more_.

Her brow knits, her mouth tugging down at one side. She holds her hands as if unsure where to put them now that she’s got him down on sacks of grain with her legs straddling his waist and his cock – behind her, like she’s not quite ready to deal with that bit just yet – nudging her arse. Her hands flutter briefly upwards, as if to cover her bare breasts, but she catches herself and forces them to rest so lightly on his stomach that he can barely feel them, except that he thinks even her faintest touch would burn on his skin like one of the ingots he heats in the forge.

“I don’t know what to do,” she admits, her voice as unsure now as it had been certain before, as shy as it had been assertive. It’s a paradox that strikes at the heart of her: the steely armor around a soft and vulnerable heart. In another life she would have a husband by now, maybe even a fat babe or two. Instead she’s here with him, at what could be the beginning of the end, and Gendry would wager all the money he doesn’t have that she’s a maiden in every possible way, never kissed or even touched with anything approaching desire.

He lays his hands over hers, holding them tight to his belly. They’d always protected each other before. Maybe everything else feels different between them in this moment, but that one thing remains exactly the same.

“Do anything you want,” he says.

Her eyes fly to his, surprised, intrigued, curious. “Anything?”

“Well,” he hedges, eyes flicking to the heaps of dragonglass he’s been forging into weapons, the same dragonglass she’d wielded earlier with such casual, thrilling expertise. “Maybe keep blood loss to a minimum.” Even as he says it, though, he knows she could trace his skin with one of those blades until blood welled and trickled, and he would still let her. He’s getting hard just thinking about it, honestly, something she hasn’t failed to notice. To his surprise, she blushes, ducking her head, and he reminds himself again that this is all newer than a freshly hatched chick to her. He feels a sudden surge of anger that this may be all they get, that there may never be time for all he wants with her and for her, for them to build something between them layer by layer. Still, he’d rather do this as if they have all the time in the world. To prove it, he takes his hands from hers and puts them behind his head, silently encouraging her to explore however she likes.

She only hesitates a moment. Her hands are small, cool, rough. The few women Gendry has been with were far from pampered noble ladies; their hands had known hard work. But Arya’s hands are different still, her thumb and forefinger ringed with the same sort of calluses Gendry has from wielding hammer and tongs. They scratch lightly at his skin, making his scalp prickle in response as she moves her hands over his chest.

Nothing escapes her attention. She touches everything, first briefly, as if taking some sort of inventory, and then coming back to linger. Her fingers find his ribs, the ridges of bone and the valleys between, counting them up one side and down the other. They trace his breastbone, his collarbone, his jaw and earlobes. Her fingertips ghost over his lips, one even poking beneath to touch his teeth. His nose is catalogued, his eyelids and lashes, brows and cheeks and chin. When her hands bristle over his scalp, his eyes slip closed despite himself and his body seems to melt into bonelessness.

It’s unusual for him, this sort of stillness, this complete submission to someone else’s touch with no effort to touch in return. He’s not normally so passive, though he can’t deny having a tender spot for bossy girls, something he knows Arya herself contributed to. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was to be touched. More than simply touched, how hungry he was for tenderness, affection, for the sort of companionship that only seems to come with someone you’ve been through six hells with and are about to face the seventh together. 

Arya’s hands are moving lower, over his shoulders and chest, rubbing lightly through the hair smattered there, even through the hair beneath his arms. As she goes lower, her touch is reduced to a single questing fingertip. With it, she finds his navel and dips inside, and she practically could have been touching his cock for how it makes his whole body draw itself up tight like a fist. He can’t help letting out a helpless groan.

She stares at him, eyes round, glittering dark in the firelight. He would think he frightened her if he couldn’t see her pulse beating at her throat and feel her knees pressing hard against his sides. For a long moment, they only stare at each other, Arya’s face full of a strange, nervy wonder. She moves the pad of her thumb over the flesh just below his navel, keeping her eyes on his. When he groans again, a slow smile spreads across her face. Arya Stark has known only a small amount of power in her life, he knows. The unwanted power of nobility as a girl, the implacable power of deadly skill as a woman. Her smile tells him he just gave her one more power.

“Don’t just lie there,” she says, her smile quirking up into affectionate mockery. “Touch me.”

Gendry’s hands obey without his input, reaching out to cup her knees. He presses his thumbs where the bend of her knees makes a crease, watching as her mouth drops open a bit at his touch. “That’s better. You’re always making me do all the work.”

Gendry snorts even as he moves his hands up onto her thighs. “No, I make you do the thinking. Remember? Strong as a hammer and dumb as an anvil, I am.”

She pinches him. Hard. “Are not. Now get on with it.”

Now her hips are under his hands, now her waist. He’s not sure what to expect when he touches the scars that band her ribs, some of them recent enough to still be angry red ridges. If he’d been foolish enough to imagine there might be some tender moment, one where he stroked or even kissed those marks as her breath caught and her eyes shone with emotion, he’d have been disabused of it immediately; she wrinkles her nose impatiently and moves his hands to her breasts.

“Leave it to you not to skip to the point.”

“ _Is_ this the point?” Gendry asks. She snorts and looks pointedly at his hands, which he has to admit are stroking and kneading more than willingly. He follows her gaze and is arrested by how it looks, her breasts bare handfuls against his palms (“You have massive hands,” she would say to him if he made that observation aloud), her skin paler here, pale enough that he sees the faint blue etchings of her veins just under the surface. His hands look clumsy against her, dirty; indeed, his thumb leaves a smudge of soot when he rubs it across her nipple, one that he might apologize for except that she gasps and surges forward into his hand.

“Do that again,” she demands, but it’s unnecessary. He was already repeating the motion. He does it again, then with his left hand on her other one, then both at once. Arya lets out an exhalation that unravels into an unsteady laugh. “Now why doesn’t it feel like that when I touch them myself?”

Gendry doesn’t trust himself to speak. It’s a fantasy he’d gone to sparingly, the thought of Arya touching herself, wherever she was. Touching herself and maybe thinking of him, the way he rarely let himself do of her. She stretches into his hands, luxuriating in new, previously unknown pleasure. There’s something primal in it, something decadent. She reminds him of nothing more than a cat stretching in sunlight, showing its belly to invite a caress.

Of course, taking such an invitation sometimes ends with teeth and claws, but that’s so utterly Arya that it only strengthens the association in Gendry’s mind.

“I’d always rather hated having these things,” she says dreamily, “but they may have their uses.”

He wants to tell her he’ll touch them as long as she likes, as long as she’ll let him. He wants to tell her how he’d like to kiss them, trace those spidery blue veins with his lips, feel the tiny ridges and bumps at their peaks with his tongue. He wants to show her just that, letting his mouth replace the words he might say.

There will be time, though. He needs to believe there will be time.

She moves atop him a bit, absorbed in the pleasure of his hands on her, unconsciously seeking more. Instinctively, she spreads her thighs further. Gendry can feel the damp warmth of her against his skin now, and his eyes nearly roll back in his head from how powerfully he wants her. She seems to feel the same; her arousal is unmistakable with her positioned the way she is. She rocks her hips experimentally, and Gendry is more than gratified at how her breath catches and her hands lift to wrap around his wrists.

“I…” she breathes. “I think I’m ready now.”

They manage it together, rearranging themselves so his cock is between her thighs as she hovers just above him, the muscles of her thighs tense and quivering. Her hand joins his on his cock as he positions it, and the feel of it has him thanking the gods that he’s had so much opportunity to learn patience and control in his life. Otherwise he might roll her beneath him and absolutely lose his head.

“It’s…strange,” she says when he’s inside her. She rests on his thighs, hands braced on his stomach, her face looking like she swallowed something sour. Gendry can’t help but laugh; she was always making him laugh. 

“Should I be insulted?”

She waves that away as she would a pesky fly. “It’s not _bad_ , just…” She shrugs. “Different. I’ve been around men a lot,” she points out, “and I’m not deaf. They always talk about it like it’s…I don’t know. Like it’s the most satisfying thing that’s ever existed.” It would be a rather deflating thing of her to say if she weren’t squirming on his lap, wriggling and testing different movements, her breath sharpening and deepening like the edge of a blade on a whetstone.

“I expect for men it usually is,” he says. “Women may have a harder time of it. Your lot takes more work and I doubt a lot of men care enough to do it when they can get what they want without it.” Gendry had learned a thing or two about _most men_ living at the Peach with whores.

She pauses in her wriggling to scowl down at him. “That’s hardly fair.”

“No,” he agrees with a laugh. “But from what I can tell, the work is worth it for you.”

He can see the questions flitting across her face but for once, she doesn’t voice them. Instead, she lifts herself up and slides back down, slowly, so slowly that Gendry feels sweat breaking out on his forehead from the effort it takes to hold back. She moves again, then again, taking only a few moments to find an easy, instinctive rhythm. Her eyes widen, her fingernails digging into the skin of his chest. He wanted to be patient, but he knows if he doesn’t help her along, at least this first time, she may not enjoy it enough to want there to be a second time.

“Here,” he says. He looks up at her as he holds his hand poised between her legs, waiting for her approval. For her permission. She sucks in her breath, her nose flaring; this is something she knows and likes already, something she’s done to herself. Still, he waits until she nods before tucking his fingers between them.

He’d given her a new sort of power before; now she gives him one in return. Gendry has wielded the heaviest war hammer, he’s bent bronze and iron and steel to his will, he’s outrun death itself, but never has he felt so strong, so capable of anything. Arya whimpers, she squirms and moans and begs. Gendry doesn’t know that he’s ever heard her say _please_ but she says it now, over and over as she strains over and around him. 

“Don’t stop.” Her face is screwed up in concentration. A dull red stain creeps up her chest. Sweat plasters her hair to her forehead. None of it is very pretty, but somehow Gendry thinks he’s never seen anything more beautiful. “ _Don’t stop_.”

White Walkers could knock down the doors to the forge this very second and Gendry still doesn’t think he could stop.

She teeters on the brink of release, her whole body straining towards it. He should pull out of her as soon as she does, he _means_ to, but when she tightens around him with a surprised cry, things like _should_ suddenly become meaningless. He moves his hands to her hips, holding her fast as he bucks up into her and spills so extravagantly he could nearly be embarrassed, except that she cries out and looks at him with such wonder on his face that he thinks he could perish in the battle tomorrow and still die a happy man. 

When she turns to him again in the night, her hand sliding across his belly, her fingers curling around his cock to explore it as thoroughly as she’d explored the rest of him before, Gendry knows it isn’t true that he could die tomorrow and die happy. It’s a foolish thing, to allow yourself to have the one thing you couldn’t bear to lose when you don’t know how many tomorrows you have left.

Foolish, yes, but still he allows himself to pull her atop him, to trace the seam of her lips with his tongue and feel the slightness of her body against his. She does the thinking, after all. If she thinks this is right, then who is he to disagree?

 

*

_ Title from I Remember, by Anne Sexton _


End file.
